Iris Kohlfürst, Ph.D. in Social Economy, studied social worker and social economist, is a Professor for Ethics in Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences in Upper Austria since 2015. For more than ten years, she worked as a social worker in different fields of social work in Austria, before completing her dissertation on ethical questions in professional life at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz. From 2009 onwards, she regularly teaches students of social work and since 2017 holds seminars on ethical aspects for professional social workers.
At the University of Applied Sciences in Upper Austria her teaching and research includes theories, methods and especially ethics in social work, where she focuses on the empirical implementation of professional ethics. Currently, she is a member of the Ethics Commission of the German Professional Association of Social Work (DBSH) and serves on the board of the Austrian Society for Social Work (ogsa), which promotes the academic discipline and the profession Social Work.